Why is American society obsessed with consuming things

Why is American society obsessed with consuming things

Perhaps the one good thing in the recent recession is that it got the American society thinking about its spending and consumption trends. Hit by hard economic times, Americans began thinking about their shopping lists and started reigning in their expenditure.

First, the primary cause of America’s obsession with consumption is capitalism and consumerism. Economic scholars attribute American obsession with consumption of goods to the American history of capitalism. Between 1820 and 1970 the average real wage increased significantly to sustain a progressively rising standard of consumption.

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A good example of this effort to simulate consumption driven is the wide belief that America was the land of abundance and a chosen place where each generation would have a better life than their parents before them. This belief prompted employers to motivate their employees to work harder, which resulted in an increase in productivity that surpassed their rate of consumption.

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